You mention memory for things, and his response is about having been shown. Maybe his "math lens" is broken such that he has it ingrained currently that math is memory based rather than cogniton based. Maybe emphasizing real world problems rather than empty formulas would get him to engage his crticial thinking. Physics may be one way to start or look at geometric problems that can be solved with Scratch that needs some numerical analysis or look for an introduction to number theory.
YES. My DD cannot really
learn math any other way. For her, the application HAS to come simultaneously-- if you try to break it down, she simply can't engage her brain to learn it.
When you do this (let her show you how to solve a problem), do you pick the problem, or does she?It really depends on what she'll tolerate on the day, honestly.
If she chooses, I set basic restrictions;
"Pick one to show me from page ____."
or
"Can you choose one of the other challenge problems and we'll try it together?"
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I'm also wondering if it is TYPICAL of him to struggle with verbal representations of symbolic mathematics. Some kids really struggle with translating the words into their mathematical equivalents.
A pizza has 10 slices-- how many slices are in 1/4th of that pizza?
For a child that has difficulty setting this up "properly" I would try the approach of DRAWING PICTURES to represent the problem. (It's a step that most scientists find necessary, in my experience-- so no shame, it's just a different way of having a mathy kind of brain.)
